May 28, 2009

Global ImageWorks, a boutique full-service stock footage company, has signed a deal with Footage.net, the stock footage search engine, to make its entire database avialble on the Footage.net search platform.

As the entertainment industry promotes its new anti-copying educational
program to the nation's teachers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) today launched its own "Teaching Copyright" curriculum and
website to help educators give students the real story about their
digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond.

May 27, 2009

Fans of Japan's best-known director Akira Kurosawa now have access
to an online treasure trove of thousands of photos, sketches and other
materials from the film-maker's life. A digital archive of 20,000
items went live on the Internet this week, ranging from private photos
and newspaper clippings to notes and sketches of movie scenes, the
website's operator said Wednesday.

May 26, 2009

The deal was almost done. In June, a tense four-year period of legal conflict between publishers, authors and Google over its library scanning program was poised to end with the approval of a visionary class action settlement. But just one week from a key May 5 deadline—by which authors and rights holders opposed to the settlement (agreed to last October; see time line) would have been required to opt out of or object to the deal—the federal judge overseeing the approval process surprised court watchers by granting a four-month extension, asked for by a group of authors led by Gayle Knight Steinbeck. Suddenly, a deal that had looked all but certain just weeks earlier now seemed in serious jeopardy.

The company said in a press releae that the multiplex will be digitally connected to Adlabs India, enabling the films to be transported on fibre optic cables within 4-6 hours making the physical film prints usage history.

Their primary purpose is to serve the scholarly mission of the archive. But Michele Hilmes, director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, allows that three new online exhibits may appeal to an audience far broader than academics and researchers — including star-struck movie fans.

Bangladesh Film Archive celebrated its 31st anniversary on May 17 with renewed enthusiasm and hopes, as it is finally going to move to its own building at Agargaon, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar. The institute has also managed to secure a generous grant from Japan recently.

Kansas City's National Archives Center opened to the public this past weekend. A newly renovated freight building next to Union Station now houses some 15 million federal documents from throughout the region.